Moving beyond soil survey maps

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The first soil surveys in America began in the early 1900s and have grown in complexity since.

“They really took off with the development of the Soil Conservation Service, now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service,” said Jason Ackerson, assistant professor of soil science at Purdue University.

“They were tasked with mapping and quantifying the United States soil resources. That task has been a monumental work. To this day, the U.S. has some of the best soil maps of anywhere on the planet.”

Although this data was once published in print, now it’s accessed online through the Web Soil Survey, where that information is translated digitally.

The maps are used for land use planning, crop inventories, identifying prime farmland and more.

“When we start thinking about 21st century agriculture and precision ag, these maps kind of fall short in their resolution and the static nature of the data they contain,” Ackerson said.

“We need to use precision soil maps for things like variable rate applications, soil-based management zones or adopting precision conservation.”

Right now there’s a mismatch between traditional soil maps and the scale at which technology can manage farmland, he said.

Methods such as digital soil mapping are the future. It can be used to provide high resolution soil information.

“Our ongoing efforts here at Purdue at my lab and others are increasing the adoption of digital soil mapping practices and providing better next generation soil survey products that provide stakeholders with the tools and data they need to make accurate, informed soil management decisions,” Ackerson said.

To learn more about data-driven agriculture, register for Purdue’s free webinar series. The webinars are held at 12:30 p.m. Thursdays.

• Feb. 25 — Dairy data utilization.

• March 4 — Digital forestry.

• March 11 — On farm experimentation.

• March 18 — Digital forestry.

• March 25 — Data in produce safety.

• April 1 — Putting a price on data.

• April 8 — Using imagery data for weed identification.

• April 15 — Smarter treatment of livestock disease.

• April 22 — Practical applications for UAVs.

• April 29 — IoT networks: sensors and data visualization.

• May 6 — Public data for the public good.

• May 13 — Machines and robotics.

Learn more at www.ag.purdue.edu/digital-ag-resources.